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American Eagle Outfitters and Coach are tops in mobile performance

November 20, 2015 12:23 PM

Retailers are doing mobile better.

That’s according to the 6th Annual Mobile Mystery Shopping Report from The E-tailing Group Inc.

The market research firm’s data shows the top 10 retailers among 50 large, well-known merchants offer consumers on smartphones the features needed to make mobile commerce website shopping consistent and convenient.

American Eagle Outfitters and Coach Inc. tied for first place in the study, which scored sites on a wide variety of factors on a 100-point scale where 80 and above is considered excellent. The E-tailing Group burrowed into features ranging from the checkout process up to the point of order submission, evaluating sites based on 174 metrics through looking at six tasks consumers are likely to perform on a smartphone: connecting to a physical store, visiting mobile home and category pages, searching for a product, researching a product, buying a product, and seeking customer service.

Only four of the top 10 scored 80 or above based on what The E-tailing Group says is a more stringent grading system this year. For the past two years, the top retailers have all scored higher than 80 points.

The E-tailing Group says the top scorers in the 2015 Mobile Mystery Shopping Index demonstrate that mobile has hit its stride. The average score for merchants in the 2015 study was higher than last year—72.09 compared with last year’s 71.60. Three of the top 10 retailers topped 80 points this year and last year. Those retailers are American Eagle Outfitters, QVC and The Men’s Warehouse.

The top six ranked merchants all generate millions in sales from consumers using smartphones and tablets, as documented in the Internet Retailer 2016 Mobile 500, which ranks retailers based on their mobile sales. American Eagle Outfitters, No. 97 in the Mobile 500, $185.9 million in 2015 mobile revenues; Coach, No. 93, had $189.75 million; QVC, No. 13, reported $2.198 billion, and The Men’s Warehouse, No. 217, had $48.65 million.

American Eagle Outfitters has told investors it intends to expand its e-commerce offerings and offer more options for shop anywhere, any time.

Retailers’ ability to offer high-quality mobile shopping features is becoming more important to their sales results among millennial shoppers ages 18 to 34, a separate survey shows. The Harris Poll conducted the survey on behalf of digital performance firm Dynatrace of 5,110 smartphone and/or tablet owners in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Australia.

81% of millennial-aged smartphone and/or tablet owners across all countries say they will abandon transactions and shop elsewhere if a mobile site or app is buggy, slow or prone to crash. More than half (51%) are likely to publicize their complaints about poor shopping experiences on social media, the survey shows.

The survey also shows millennials will be busy shopping for the holidays on their digital devices:

50% will do more holiday shopping on their mobile devices than they will by buying gifts in stores.

62% of millennial smartphone/tablet users will use their devices when they are in stores shopping for gifts to compare prices, read product reviews and download coupons.

49% of millennial smartphone/tablet users and 47% of all adults using such devices say they would shop elsewhere if a mobile site or app fails to load in three seconds or less.